We have some awfully good bird shooters here on FM and I won't say that these two shots compete in that league, but I don't think they're bad at all.

On #1, I would echo Bob a bit and suggest the following:
- assuming you have the pixels for the size of image you have in mind, I would crop out the tree on the left and the most of the blue sky on the right and put the bird in the upper-right rule of thirds spot.
- warm the image slightly.
- blur the background a bit to hide the bokeh artifacts.
- do a little highlight recovery on the back wing. It's not technically blown as-is but I would darken it slightly to make the detail a little more visible.
- sharpen the bird as much as I could without creating artifacts and halos.
- add a very subtle dark vignette.

On #2 (which is my favorite, by the way), I just suggest backing off on the sharpening of the reeds a little bit (as-is, you're driving the sharpening halos to almost pure black and white). Beyond that, it would be just playing around with different curves, saturation levels, and vignettes until I found the version I liked best. I think it would make a great living room print pretty much as-is.

Good feedback above.
Nice job catching the egret in flight. These are not easy shots and the bright whites make a challenge on exposure. As Dennis pointed out, you have technically preserved the highlights but more detail should be extracted over the wings in general, and specifically over the brightest areas.
I selectively recovered highlights, reduced exposure over the brightest areas. Did some bump of sharpness and clarity over the darker wings for more feather detail. Some global subtle changes in vibrance, curves (contrast) and highlight recovery, cropped, subtle vignette.

The reworked version is perhaps a bit oversharpened and better results working on a larger file or RAW version, but here are some applied ideas.

Second feels a bit lost to me in the expanse, but I do like the environmental aspect. Wish you had a bit more on the left. I would work on more highlight recovery and tighten the existing version a bit, maybe losing 20-25% from the right.
These are nice comps, BTW.
Scott

I tried to take all of the comments into account with the below. On image #1, I think they were a huge improvement! On image #2, I think that I like the original better. I like the contrast between the small, smooth, white, curvy bird and the huge, straight, disorganized, yellow reeds. I think that when you crop it and recover the highlights on the bird, you lose some of the contrast somehow. But I'm not sure.